Tuesday, August 01, 2006

I read once that fully-loaded planes never crash. Meaning, whenever there's an air accident, invariably it turns out that a statistically significant number of passengers end up missing the flight, and thus save themselves from a fiery end. It's nothing so dramatic as a passenger getting to the gate and thinking, I'm going to die if I get on this plane, and then said passenger scurries off to long-term parking and speeds home. More like, a number of passengers dilly-dally the day of their flight, and arrive late, or some trivial matter comes up that causes them to miss the flight entirely.

The theory is that each human brain is hard-wired to be sensitive to extra-sensory cues. Perhaps it's a holdover from paleolithic times, when man was a hunter-gatherer, with no civilizational memory, and no written culture, and where a gut feeling that a drought was coming, or a hungry saber-toothed tiger was silently stalking the tribe, helped put the giddy-up in primitive man's garter. Think Fiver in Watership Down. You just get a weird feeling, and consciously or not, you heed that feeling.

Anyway, such a situation occured with Rock Club tonight. The casual reader can pore through the previous posts, and see that something kept Erin away from the Sleater-Kinney show. He rejected numerous attempts by fellow Rock Club members to procure him a ticket, instead choosing to mope at home, most likely watching Gilmore Girls by himself, or updating his Match.com profile in an attempt to lure more slutty Alaskans into his web.

But then something happened to vindicate Erin, and prove that he, like the aforementioned air crash avoiders, is in fact in tune with his sixth sense, while the rest of us cruise through life, oblivious to the psychic cues in front of us. After a rousing set by opening band The Rogers Sisters, a scruffy looking furball roadie announced that the DC Fire Marshall had ordered the audience to exit the 9:30 Club. The reason? An electric transformer in front of the club was threatening to fail, which would plunge the club into darkness, and transform a straight-ahead, ass-kicking rock show into some sort of James Taylor/Jackson Browne unplugged acoustic set. For the sake of Rock, we had to leave.

The only logical conclusion is that Erin has heightened psychic powers, like Nostradamus (right). You may think, wow, that's great--just like a superhero! But, unfortunately, Hollywood has taught us that people with these powers are often at best shunned as freaks by frightened small town minds, or at worst, detained by the FBI and held in an isolation cell until they die, alone and insane, having chewed off their fingernails, and probably their fingers as well. Oh well. Nice knowing you, Erin. I'll try and put in a good word for you to the G-Men, but again, as Hollywood has shown, nobody listens to the freak's friends, even if those friends are young and cute. Like me.

Alright, with that out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks. First, the Rogers Sisters. Like Bang Bang Bang, they were fronted by an Asian of indeterminate nationality. Come to think of it, so was Asobi Seksu. Hmmmm. Like Cream, or better yet, Canadian rockers Triumph (below), the Rogers Sisters is what is known as a "Power Trio", consisting of a guitarist, bass player, and a drummer. But, unlike Triumph, the drummer and lead guitarists don't just look like chicks, they are chicks. Furthermore, the lead guitarist had all kinds of tatoos on her legs, including on her substantially meaty thighs.

Fair enough--like Canada, America is a free country, and people are free to form power trios and tatoo their thighs. I believe that's implicit in the 4th amendment. Musically, they weren't too shabby--they sort of sounded like the 1980s band X, with the dual John Doe/Exene Cervenka aural assault. On the down side, they were lacking in the melody department, and left me with no songs that I can hum to myself as I sit here and type, only hours after seeing them. I'll rate them at 5.7--above average, perhaps worth another look. It's always tough being the opening band.

As mentioned above, there was no Sleater-Kinney, although the 9:30 Club assures us we will all receive refunds, or tickets to a rescheduled show. On the plus side, this being S-K's farewell tour, the rescheduled show may be tacked on to the end of the tour, making it a real possibilty that the Washington DC show may in fact be Sleater-Kinney's last show ever. But all I know is, if Erin again refuses to attend the rescheduled show, I may also take a pass--there might be a Great-White-in-Providence situation in Rock Club's future.